About David Emitt Adams

Born in Arizona, photographer David Emitt Adams has long been interested in capturing the deserts of the American West, following the work of 19th-century photographers like Timothy H. O’Sullivan. Engaging historical media, Adams employs the techniques of early photography, such as tintype prints, and explores their application and resurgence in a contemporary context, including in three-dimensional art objects. For his “Conversations with History” series, Adams engaged a labor-intensive wet-plate collodion process to inscribe desert imagery on discarded, rusted cans salvaged from these landscapes. The artist describes how their “rich patina is the evidence of light and time, the two main components inherent in the nature of photography.”